Ethan turns 9!

Ethan wanted to celebrate his birthday this year with his 2 best buddies, Matthew and Brendan.  We went to JumpStreet and they had a blast!

The boys came back to our house after and we had pizza and brownies and opened presents.

After that the kids played some video games, watched a movie, and settled in for their sleepover.  In the morning, Ryan and Logan woke up to realize that their brother and his friends had played a prank on them! LOL!  Too funny!

We celebrate Ethan's birthday and Chris's birthday together with the family at Olive Garden.  We had a pretty large group!  It was nice to visit with everyone and celebrate Chris and Ethan.

Opening a few presents....

Jim & Rochelle got him a huge survival kit with ton of items...his favorite was this hatchet!

A little card from Kinley

This next picture just makes me laugh!  This is my son!  My optimistic, happy, exuberant, expressive, sunshine boy!  I love his face....it is so him!

Happy 9th Birthday Ethan!

Around the House.....Fall 2012

We have been enjoying our baby cousins!  They are so cute and starting to crawl around and get into things.  We are loving these little cutie pies!

Tucker

Teagan

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We had a hawk come visit our backyard while he munched on his "Dove Mcnugget".  That was cool to see!

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The freeway overpass opened over I-17.  We took a bike ride to check it out!

My 3 Cub Scout Sons!

Ths year all three boys are in cubscouts together.  Logan is a Webelo II, Ethan is a Bear, and Ryan is a little Tiger.  They are so cute all together!

Walnut Canyon National Monument & Lava River Cave, Flagstaff, AZ

We decided to take an overnight trip up to Flagstaff to check out a campsite for an upcoming cub scout camp.  Since I am on a National Park kick lately we decided to also explore Walnut Canyon National Monument and hike an old lava tube. 

We arrived in the evening and ate dinner at Bun Huggers- a yummy burger place in Flagstaff.  We checked into the hotel and hung out for awhile and then went to bed.

We were up early and had breakfast at the hotel.  We decided to go check out the camp site first so we did that.  Then we went to hike the lava tube!  It started raining as we arrived but it didn't matter because we would be underground soon!

We had to crawl down into this opening to enter the cave.  It was VERY crowded- lots of people in there.  Someone actually was smoking or had smoked inside the cave and it was almost unbearable to breath the nasty air.  There is very little airflow down there! 

I tried to take some pictures but nothing really turned out.  There were neat lava flows and similar features to the lava cave we hiked in Hawaii.  But it was alot brighter in the cave with so many other in there with us!

Our Family!

After our cave exploration we headed over to Walnut Canyon.

We had a picnic lunch inside the park. This giant crow tried to share with us!

After lunch we set out to explore the Canyon.  We hiked along the Island Trail and saw several ancient dwellings along the way.  We were allowed to go into the ruins and check everything out.  It was really interesting!

Some of this had been rebuilt by the park service to show what it was like back then.

The kids earned their Junior Ranger Badges.

It was a really fun little trip to explore some more of our National Parks!

Logan's first Dove Hunt

Logan is officially a hunter!  Age 11- first dove shot with a .22 given to him by Uncle Jim.